Home Page - 2007-12-22

Recently I floated in a 12ft deep swimming pool for an hour! This was
my first time ever and I'm 34 years of age. No huffing and puffing, no
extra inborn lung/body capacity, and yet there I was, and even the hand leg
movements is just to relax and not to float. Don't believe me? Or maybe
you believe this, and also assume that I'm kind of a mystic who can
walk on water!? Of course probably not the second, but that is the kind
of extreme stance we take when we encounter an balance act. If
something is fantastic, either it has to be impossible practically, or
it is some awesome mystery. Maybe there is another uninteresting
option, that of meticulous practice: Kind of go daily to the field,
slog it out, practice all day, and slowly you become a master. So
anything fantastic is either one of these 3 options: Impossible,
Mysterious, or Boring. Right? So not
worth trying for? Now all ye non-swimmers, and even swimmers who cannot
do the above, how do you see it? I can assure you I really did this
(call me, I can show you), I'm no born swimmer, and finally this
does not take years of boring practice (in fact I feel I can teach this
to anybody interested, in under 10 minutes).

Ah! There you see it, it is kind of a trick. Right? The 4th reason for
anything fantastic is a secret trick? Maybe there is a 5th reason then.

...Programing
is not natural. If you consider basic global variable based
programming, all you need are only 4 concepts: Maybe statements
(assignment and expression), Variables, Loops, Branch. This is the
complete set for even full mastery, and you might take say 1-2 hours to
explain all in detail with an example. And yet the newbie cannot
program even simple "Add all numbers below N" like non-trivial
3-liners. So what is the problem? Teaching methods? Maybe a programing
gene?! Nope. The confidence to be able to break any logical problem
into a program is also a 'Balance'. Why a balance, why not just
term it as a knowledge? As we saw, not all all knowledge is a balance.
Memorizing is not a Balance. You don't forget programming if you have
not learned to do it once. It does not come really incrementally but
only in snaps.